


No Way Out

by SegaBarrett



Category: Breaking Bad, Oz (TV)
Genre: Fusion, Gen, Internalized Victim Blaming, Kink Meme, Nazis, Self-Blame, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-24
Updated: 2016-01-24
Packaged: 2018-05-15 20:47:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5799499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jesse finds himself in Oz, and while thoughts escape are many, actual plans seem hard to find.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Way Out

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own Breaking Bad, or Oz, and I make no money from this.
> 
> A/N: I started writing this a long time ago (for the Breaking Bad Kink Meme: prompt was basically "Jesse ends up in Oz in Beecher's general situation") and finally finished it. It's a bit all over the place, but I figured I would post it anyhow. I hope someone likes it!

For all of Mr. White’s mad scientist skills and last-minute saves, he hadn’t been able to get Jesse out of this one. Or himself, even; but Mr. White was off in the infirmary ward here in Oz, far away from Jesse’s place in Emerald City. 

According to Saul, this section was supposed to be better than gen-pop. It was some kind of new experimental unit designed to train prisoners to be better people by the time they got out. Jesse wasn’t very sure that he was ever getting out, however, given his sentence, which was too long for him to even wrap it around his brain.

Saul had promised appeals. He said he would go up to the Supreme Court if necessary.

In the meantime, Jesse was here. Carrying the clothes he would be changing into as he was led in a row to find out where his cell would be – no, wait, his pod. They called them pods here. Jesse couldn’t really tell the difference other than that, allegedly, “your pod is your home, and you will keep it clean” according to the lady guard who had explained all the rules to them a few moments ago. 

He wondered what he was expected to do. Maybe he was supposed to turn to the person ahead of him and try to make friends with them or something. Maybe he needed to find someone who reminded him of Morgan Freeman – he’d seen The Shawshank Redemption more than once, of course. But first of all, he had to protect his ass. 

He shuddered as he realized that he really did mean that literally.

He’d seen enough prison movies and heard enough rumors to know that he was exactly the kind of guy the bigger guys might go after. And it wasn’t like Jesse had connections, not here. 

“This is your cell, Pinkman,” the guard told him, leading him into a room where a large, burly black man was sitting on a bed.

“Hello, Pinkman,” the man whispered. He had an African accent and a very low voice. “I am looking… shall we say, forward, to seeing if your ass is as pink as your name.”

“Hey, lay off, Adebisi,” a voice called, and a terrified Jesse turned around to find himself looking at a guy about his age with short blonde hair, broad shoulders and sort of blue green eyes. He looked like an average enough guy. Not a big guy and not nearly as scary as the muscular man who was now licking his lips in Jesse’s direction. 

“Uh, hi,” Jesse stammered, looking back and forth between the two.

“Would you like to come lie down with me?” Adebisi drawled, looking him up and down. “I’d like to welcome you… to Emerald City.”

“I…” Jesse stammered out. He didn’t want to make an enemy on his first date, but somehow he had a feeling that he wasn’t going to like what Adebisi had in mind when he offered to “welcome” him to the unit.

“Come with me,” the blonde said, and it seemed like a good enough excuse to get away from Adebisi. Jesse grabbed his things and rushed to the blonde’s side. “Why don’t you talk to McManus?” he suggested, “Get yourself assigned to my pod instead. You don’t have to deal with that kind of thing. It’s just not right, really.” The blonde looked like he was musing it over. Jesse raised an eyebrow and nodded. He’d go to McManus’ office. Maybe he had found a friend.

“But wait,” Jesse said before the blonde could head on his way, “I don’t even know your name.”

“Alquist. Todd Alquist.”

***

Jesse talked to McManus and eagerly requested a transfer to share a pod with Todd. McManus had looked skeptical, but Jesse had managed to convince him to come around with the use of puppy dog eyes and a lot of pleading. He couldn’t leave him in there with Adebisi, could he? Jesse was determined to do his time, but he wanted to come out of the experience as a better person, if that was at all possible at this point, with all he had done. 

“Request granted,” McManus said, looking tired.

***

“Thanks again,” Jesse told Todd, “I think you really saved my ass in there.” He offered his hand in a fistbump.

“Yeah,” Todd said, looking away for a moment and not returning the gesture. “Your ass.”

He turned around slowly, and in retrospect Jesse really should have seen it coming, but he was caught off-guard.

Todd knocked him off-balance and pinned him to the bed.

“Uncle Jack always told me that one day I’d get my own prison bitch.” The scariest thing about how he said it was that it wasn’t with anger or cruelty, but a sort of muted excitement, like a child finally getting a puppy after having waited years.

“Uhhh,” Jesse gasped out nervously. “Todd? Can you let me up?” 

Maybe he was just playing. Maybe there was the tiny possibility that he was just playing.

“Take off your clothes.” This was said in the same muted tone, with only a slight haze of curiosity bubbling up from it to come out and play.

“Todd please…” Jesse was starting to get desperate now, and at last fight or flight kicked in and he began to struggle against the pin. While not being much bigger than Jesse, however, Todd was stronger, and didn’t even seem to be exerting very much effort in keeping Jesse on the bunk. Jesse decided to try begging again. “Listen, you don’t…” He stopped himself before the words came out, the words that would tell Jesse inside that whatever was coming, whatever he seemed to be utterly unable to stop, he deserved it.

He deserved it from the second he had seen Gale’s face and still pulled that trigger, still did that thing, still became a murderer.

He stopped fighting, lay limp against the bunk. He wouldn’t help him at least. At least he wouldn’t help him do it.

***

Jesse was having trouble breathing as he opened his eyes. He must have passed out, maybe he had blissfully passed out. Or maybe he had just come away from himself, let go of himself. It was a feeling he wished he had had earlier in life, like when he was watching Gale’s brains seep out of his head. A departure from self would have been welcome there, but apparently not.

He opened one eye. Apparently, he was alive, though whether that was a blessing or a curse still remained to be seen.

“Jesse?”

A voice floated out of the distance. The man was still in here with him. Jesse wanted to throw up.

“Get away from me,” Jesse snarled. He turned and backed against the wall protectively, holding his hands up. Todd didn’t move closer to him, not yet, so maybe that was a tiny win.

“That’s not the way it works in here, Jesse.” Todd spoke as if he was patiently explaining things to someone who just didn’t want to understand. “You have to listen to what I say. And you have to let me do what I want to do. And then I protect you.”

“I don’t want your protection!”

“You don’t really have a choice, Jesse. Now sit back down and we’re going to talk about the way it’s going to be.”

The scariest thing about Todd was that he wasn’t even raising his voice. He was talking so conversationally it was as if he was asking Jesse to get some groceries from the store.

Jesse sat back down on the bottom bunk, trying desperately to catch his breath. He had to get in touch with Mr. White. Mr. White would find a way to get him out of this, somehow.

“How is it going to be?” Jesse asked quietly and slowly, because maybe, just maybe if he could distract him, he could find enough time to get to Mr. White. No matter how angry the older man could be after all that had happened, he couldn’t be mad enough to let Jesse get subjected to this! Or could he?

After all, the last words Mr. White had hissed in his ear were that he was going to get him, that he was going to make him pay for screwing up his last perfect plan. Jesse hadn’t meant to. The cops had been on to them and Jesse had driven the RV into a ditch. He’d been trying to get over the damned thing, but it had gotten stuck, and Mr. White had been yelling bloody murder at Jesse, telling him that it was all his fault. His exact words had been something about never wanting to see Jesse again and hoping that his roommate would beat him to death.

But he couldn’t have meant it, could he? Jesse had to hope that he couldn’t have meant it, not in the cool light of reason, the next day.

He closed his eyes. He had to hope, or pray, or something… but how would he get a message out? How?

***

As it turned out, there were a number of ways to get a message to someone while one was in Oz, but none of them were particularly fool-proof. They mainly required knowing someone, and Todd didn’t let him get close enough to anyone to actually know them. In the cafeteria, he had to sit with Todd and his crew, who Jesse was slowly coming to realize was an abnormally large and spectacularly violent group of men.

One of them, a man named Kenny, draped an arm around Jesse and held him next to him in a punishing, bone-breaking fake hug. Jesse struggled to breathe. 

“Listen, prag. You’re going to learn how it goes around here sooner or later. We don’t mind teaching you.” He chortled. “But it’ll be easier for you if you become our fucktoy of your own free will.”

Jesse struggled, wanting to get away. Needing to get away – how was he going to find Mr. White? There had to be a way out, he just didn’t know what it was yet. 

“Hey! Simmer down.”

“Please.” The word coiled out of Jesse’s mouth in a tiny, terrified breath.

“Look at him,” Kenny said with a grin. He put one hand down on Jesse’s ass and gripped it roughly. Jesse looked around desperately for someone, a guard maybe. Someone who could save him. But there wasn’t anyone.

He knew he was really looking for Mr. White, after all. What reason would the guards have to care about what happened to him? He was an ant, a blip on the radar screen. He didn’t affect their daily lives, unless he died, maybe. Maybe then they’d be stuck with some extra paperwork.

“He’s so pathetic.”

“Come on, guys,” Todd spoke up. “He’s just nervous. I gotta take care of him. D’you understand? He’s my responsibility.”

“It’s like a fucking puppy or some shit,” Jack, who seemed to be the undisputed leader of the school screwed-up group, spoke up, slapping Todd’s back. “I should have got you a guinea pig, nephew. Sorry to have disappointed. Now you got your very own prag, you gotta feed him and walk him!” Jack tilted back his head and laughed. Jesse didn’t find anything all that funny about this situation, not at all.

“Please. I don’t know why…” Jesse started, knowing that it wasn’t going to do any good but hoping that maybe he could just stall for time. If he could just stall for time, then he could find a way out of this. Though the easiest way out of this was starting to seem as if it would be tying a noose in his cell and hanging himself with it. That would make it all go away; that would get rid of Todd, wouldn’t it? Then there would be nothing left but sleep and peace, and memories of what used to be. 

But something was telling him that even that wouldn’t be the end of it. He would get revived, or maybe his ghost would come back to that cell and he’d be back here with Todd again. He couldn’t risk it; that was too terrifying to bear.

“Please,” Jesse spoke up again, though that wasn’t exactly helping prove his case about how he wasn’t pathetic. Maybe he should change tact. “I have connections.” He pictured himself as one of those guys named Mad Dog or Diesel. One of the guys that made others quake when they walked by, the ones people crossed the street to get away from. Maybe, the man he’d been in Mexico. He tried to pull himself up past his height, into someone other than the man he was. A man who other people would fear.

It didn’t work. The others just laughed.

“Yeah, we know. Walter White, right?” 

Todd burst out laughing.

“That old man?” he asked, “I heard he’s crazy, but he’s not much else to brag about, ain’t he Uncle Jack? And doesn’t he have cancer or some shit?” He smirked.

“That’s right.” Uncle Jack put a fake-friendly hand on Jesse’s shoulder. “And if this one don’t behave, maybe we’ll put him outta his misery. Won’t we?”

***

Jesse was hiding in a closet, right up alongside a few mops and some supplies. He was trying hard to keep from crying. That would be like throwing chum to a shark – not only would Todd, Jack and their crew come, everyone would come. They would come in droves.

He didn’t have much of a choice. He’d have to find Mr. White and hope that the man would forgive him. There had been a few isolated moments, after all, when Mr. White had seemed to actually like him.   
Jesse had never been physically active as a kid. He’d come up with excuses to get out of gym class, if only to avoid having to watch a lot of other dudes walk around in their boxers. He wished he hadn’t done that now, if not only because prison was worse than that and so, so much more.

He stared up at the ceiling. He had seen so many movies where people crawled along an air duct to get to safety, but had no idea how one would actually go about even getting up there, let alone where to go once he got inside.

Jesse slid his hands over the wall. Maybe there were grooves. Maybe he could find a way to push himself up; maybe if he tried hard enough it would be like one of those rock walls they had at little circuses, the ones that were fun to do but not that hard. 

This one would be hard. This one would take everything he had. And how did he even know if he could figure out how to get back to Mr. White this way? And even if he could find him, what would he do then?  
He closed his eyes and imagined what he would say to him. As much as he didn’t want to, he would probably have to start out by asking the guy’s damn forgiveness, and trying to make it up to him. He wondered what prison had done to Mr. White. Hopefully, he had become a badass, but not so much of a badass that he would turn down Jesse’s pleas. Maybe he still had a soft spot for him, no matter how Jesse might have screwed up. He remembered the Mr. White who had begged him not to walk out into the desert, into certain death. He needed that Mr. White.

Jesse breathed deep. He couldn’t lose control. He had to keep his wits about him. If he managed that, then he’d be out of here, eventually. If he could just hang on long enough to get to Mr. White, or long enough for Saul to get him released, maybe. Saul had to be working behind the scenes, right? He was paying the guy a pretty big salary for him to just be sitting on his hands while all this horrible shit was happening to Jesse in prison. He hadn’t had a meeting with Saul in weeks. Maybe he needed to write him a letter or call him or something.

He looked back up at the tiles. He’d get up there eventually. He just needed to figure it out. And maybe there was another plan he could use, first. Just while he was figuring that one out. Then he’d go see Mr. White, and Mr. White would have an even better plan. The plan that would get them out of here for good. The plan that would, at last, make Jesse safe.

***

“Jesse, no offense, but I think my hands are a little tied at the moment.” Saul put his hands on the desk and gave Jesse a bland smile, with none of Saul’s usual sarcasm behind it. “They have you dead to rights on most of this.”

“That’s not what you said before,” Jesse chirped, starting to feel desperate, “You said they were stretching. That they couldn’t prove half of it and they were just looking to make a case because Heisenberg had gotten to be such big news recently.” His eyes went wide. “Saul, you got to get me out of here. I can’t last in here.”

“Well, you could have told me that. But I can’t help you there.” Saul looked him over. “But you don’t have any guy’s name tattooed to your forehead, so I suppose that’s good. You haven’t had to grab anyone’s pockets, have you?”

Jesse stared at him.

“I don’t know what the hell you’re even talking about, Saul, but I don’t want to talk about it! I need you to get me out of here. Either that, or I need you to get me in touch with Mr. White. Can you do that, Saul? Have you talked with him at all?”

“Listen, kid, I think you’re getting a little out of your depth here. What exactly are you planning? Because if you’re trying to whip up some kind of a prison riot then, whoo hoo, I better warn you, it’s not going to work. They come in with riot gear, I tell you, and…”

“I’m not trying to start a riot, you idiot! My God… I’m trying to escape, bitch, and you need to help me!”

“Haven’t you realized by now?” Saul looked away, then back at him. “There’s no way out of Oz but for the grace of the governor.”

“Well, get the governor on the line then!” Jesse begged. “You don’t know what’s going on in there! Or please just tell Mr. White he needs to see me! You know I haven’t asked that man for anything, ever… But, Saul, you know I saved his old ass more than once. You know what I’ve done.”

“No offense, Jesse… But he’s saved your bacon more than once, too. And he seems pretty teed off that you’re the reason he’s in here.”

Jesse dragged his hand over his face.

“He’s his own reason he’s in here!” Suddenly, Jesse’s face fell. “You’ve seen him? Is he okay?”

“He’s, well, he’s Walter. And sometimes, he’s still more than a little bit Heisenberg. He’s not doing all that great, health-wise, but he’s king of the place. Just like he always wanted to be, he’s King.”

“Well, if he’s so majestic, then he’s got sway, yo! Just bring him a message from me, Saul. You gotta do this for me. You owe me one.”

“I owe you one? For what? For continuing to drive me completely up the wall day in and day out? I should just send you a basket of fruit or something…”

Jesse rolled his eyes.

“Listen. I don’t want to get any more direct than this, but you don’t know what’s happening to me in here, Saul.”

Saul looked right at him.

“Oh no… Listen, Pinkman… I know.”

***

Jesse was trying to vain to massage the ache out of his shoulders. Just one of many aches that seemed as if it would never leave him, whether he got out of this hellhole or not. Oz had made his its mark on Jesse, had tattooed him… 

Tattoos… Jesse shuddered. It was all coming back to him now. What had happened just before. 

He shuddered. He didn’t want to remember it, but there it was. It was going to follow him around like a shadow, like a parasite. Like something attached to him that was never going to let him go.  
After meeting with Saul, he had gone back to his cell, trying to drum up hope in his brain that maybe, despite all his blustering, Saul could get a message to Mr. White after all. Then the old man could figure out some crazy shit that could get Jesse out of this place. He didn’t want Todd’s hands on him ever again.

There had been a voice in his ear. He’d been sitting there, on his bunk, just thinking about this, about every horrible thing that had happened to him and what he was going to do to fix it, the plan he had to come up with, or else.

He hadn’t been paying attention; that had been the problem. At least, that was what he told himself later. Maybe if he had been more on his guard, they wouldn’t have managed to sneak up on him all at once.  
They wouldn’t have been able to tie him down to the bunk and make sure no one else heard.

They wouldn’t have been able to strike a match and light up a metal… something, Jesse didn’t know what. In fact, he didn’t know much of anything once the pain hit, once he was screaming so loud that it was all silent in his head. It was like white noise, like a pitch so high that only dogs could hear it.

He closed his eyes and heard himself pleading with Mr. White to come, to come save him. He needed him. Whatever he had done, he was sorry, he was sorry.

***

Jesse was shivering, shaking in his bunk. He thought he was going to cry, but he wasn’t ready to let himself. If he did, well, didn’t that mean that they had won? That they had really won?   
But they had carved their symbol in his fresh. Wasn’t that a win enough? Why was he even still fighting at this point? It was time to give up, crawl into a hole and try to tune out as much as he could for the rest of his sentence. Maybe if he asked around he could even get some more of the blue stuff, ready to light his brain on fire and forget his own name.

When he got out, he was never going to be normal again, he knew that much. He could only hope to try and keep his brain screwed on as much as possible… or was it the opposite that he wanted? If he went completely crazy, completely off the rails, maybe he would be far enough away that Todd and Jack couldn’t get to him, not really. He had heard about people going outside themselves, floating above themselves at times like this.

He wished he knew how that was done. 

He could survive, at least. He could survive for now, so long as they all stayed away. Maybe he could pretend that it wasn’t there, that they hadn’t carved a swastika on his ass and whispered words of warning, that they were connected with Vern Schillinger down in Unit B and that if Jesse breathed a word of this then he would get him, not only him but his entire family. That he needed to stay quiet, quiet and complacent, and then everything would go okay for him. At least up until Jack and the others got bored. 

He could pretend that he was back home, back with Andrea and Brock. They had welcomed him into their home… why had they done that? Hadn’t they seen how this was going to go, what darkness had always lain behind his eyes? He had to have been chosen for this somehow, hadn’t he? He had to have done something to deserve to be thrown into prison, far past what they had actually caught him for.

After all, they still didn’t know about Gale. That, above and beyond everything else, made him deserve to be here. He’d taken that man’s life. What reason could he use to justify wanting to be in control of his own?

***

The first time he caught a glimpse of him, he was sure he was a mirage, a fountain in the middle of a desert.

He looked different. That was the first thing Jesse was sure of. He didn’t recognize him by sight, even, so much as by sense, by scent, the way two animals recognize one another even when they’ve been away from each other for years on end. The way that a blind man realizes that he’s home at last even when he’s just clicking away with his cane. 

He was carrying some clothes and bedsheets, heading right toward Jesse’s bunk. It couldn’t be, could it? He had to have dreamed him up, after telling Saul he needed to talk to him… Or had Saul made this happen, somehow? He had figured out a way to transfer Mr. White into Jesse’s cellblock?

It would be hard to tell where this would go. If Mr. White was still mad at him, maybe he’d still just let Jesse suffer. But if he got into his protective streak, well… Then maybe Jesse would be saved at last. 

“Mr. White!” Jesse hissed. He would have screamed it, would have yelled it from the rooftops if he hadn’t gotten ahold of himself in time, hadn’t realized that if Mr. White did indeed have a plan, Jesse shouldn’t be calling attention to it.

He felt so lonely, though, so desperate. It was like an electric shock pulsing through him not to be able to reach out towards the other man, to be able to grip him and yell at him and just need him in a way Jesse hadn’t thought was even possible. 

Mr. White turned his head, and Jesse knew he’d heard him. 

But he turned his head back around again, ignoring him. For now, at least.

Jesse gripped his nails into his palms. He wanted to explode, wanted to climb the walls, wanted to dissolve into a pool of tears.

***

Jesse’s face was pressed against the lunch table as Tobias Beecher tapped him on the shoulder.

“I know that look,” Beecher commented, and Jesse looked up at him, disinterested. 

“Why are you even sitting here?” Jesse asked, pushing a piece of hair out of his eye. “Go away and leave me alone.”

“You look like I did when I first got here.” 

“Oh?” Jesse knew Beecher had a reputation for being crazy, and also for his on-again, off-again romance with another inmate, Chris Keller. He also knew that that whole romance had a tendency to get pretty violent, so he was hoping Beecher wasn’t talking to him to try and pull him into that in some way.

Then again, another part of him was just relieved that anyone was talking to him at all. He’d spent too long with only the crazy Nazis talking to him, taunting him, and controlling him.

“Yeah. I was Schillinger’s prag.”

“What’s a prag?”

“I’m sure you can figure it out.” Beecher’s lip curled. “Especially since it’s what you are, right now, for Schillinger’s little offshoot gang. Jack and the rest.”

“There’s more of them?”

“There’s always more of them.” Beecher laughed, a short hard laugh that made it sound like he was about to dry heave. “What you have to do is know how to win against them. How to make it so they can’t get to you.”

“Sounds impossible,” Jesse mused. “I don’t think there’s much of me left to get.” He was still picturing Mr. White. 

“Whenever you think there’s nothing left… They’ll show you that there was more, and you just didn’t know.”

Jesse looked down at the ground, let his eyes roll into his head with a sigh. 

“Why are you talking to me now? Why do you care? You’ve barely said two words to me before.”

“Because they said I might be getting out. And if I do, well, you’ll be on your own. I noticed no one in here talks to you – you don’t have a group. You should at least join with the Others and see what happens there.”

“The Others?”

“Yeah. It’s basically exactly what it sounds like, Pinkman. All the people who aren’t in, well, a crew or whatever you want to call it. People like me, or Augustus, or Keller. We’re the Others.”

“I don’t even talk to any of you,” Jesse spoke up. He didn’t want to be an Other. He didn’t want to be here at all. He wanted to open his eyes and be back at home, with all this being a nightmare that he would never tell anyone about and would only even think about in his darkest nights, the ones where he was only staying up because the crank was making him.

“Well, you should. Otherwise the next few years is going to be a pretty lonely time.” Beecher chuckled, and it was low and deep and scary. It was as if he’d been laughing maniacally before but he’d hurt his throat so that was all that was left. Like he couldn’t even get hysterically anymore, because it was just too tiring. Maybe this guy did need Jesse’s help, did need him to be a friend, but just the same, Jesse thought maybe soon, his eyes would look that dead, and he would laugh like that. 

“Yeah, tell me about it,” Jesse said eventually. “But if I had my way, I wouldn’t be in here at all.”

“Like any of us had a choice in this,” Beecher replied. His voice sounded strangely serene. “It was fate, or bad luck, or karma.”

“How did you even land in here in the first place?” Jesse asked. That led to him wondering how Todd had ended up in there, too, but that wasn’t a thought process he really wanted to follow for any point of time. All the scenarios were far too scary to want to visualize. 

“I was drinking… I… I was driving, there was a little girl on a bike. She drove out in front of me.”

Jesse gaped at him.

“That’s… awful… but…” He found himself remembering his group leader back in rehab, talking about how he’d backed over his own daughter in the driveway. “But it was an accident. I mean, this place – you don’t really belong here, then, do you? I mean, not like some people do.”

“Like you do?” Beecher cocked his head to the side and let out a shrill laugh. “You give yourself way too much credit, Pinkman.” 

“Hey, I’m connected.”

“To what? You’re nobody in here. Unless you want to start acting as crazy as I am…”

“Or get mixed up with Keller?”

Beecher’s eyes darkened.

“Keller is mine. He’s not any of your concern. You leave him alone.”

He rose from the table.

“Wait,” Jesse called out. Beecher stood and looked at Jesse with a sigh.

“Yeah? What?”

Jesse bit his lip. He didn’t want to ask for help – no, wait, that part was a line. Hadn’t he pleaded with Saul for help but hadn’t gotten any? What made this any difference, if he begged now? 

“I need a friend. You’re the only one I’ve got, and I barely know you. But we can work… something out, can’t we?”

Beecher blinked at him, tilted his head, and laughed.

“Did you just proposition me?”

Jesse sucked in a breath and looked Beecher up and down. Whatever Beecher might ask him to do, it couldn’t be that much worse than what he had been doing already.

“Maybe, yeah,” he admitted. “Especially if you know a way out of this place.” He lowered his voice. “Maybe we could get out together. A smart guy like you – maybe you have a plan?”   
Beecher sighed. 

“All right… But only because you look like a lost puppy and I’m actually starting to feel bad for you. If I come up with anything, you’ll be in on it. And I’ll see what I can do to get them off your back… But I can’t promise anything. I’ll never be free of Schillinger, and you’ll never be free of Welker. That’s just the way it is.”

Jesse wondered at that. 

***

Jesse was in fitful sleep, at least as much as he could manage. He knew that he needed to sleep, at least, but with Todd in the room it was nearly impossible. 

The blonde man was watching him; Jesse wondered if Todd ever slept at all. He probably didn’t – he seemed inhuman, like a cyborg or a transformer. Maybe someone just plugged him in and he periodically recharged. 

When he did sleep, just a little, he dreamt that he was back with Mr. White. Sometimes they were cooking, and sometimes Jesse was back in his chemistry class. In the latter, there was always a big test that day, and Jesse hadn’t bothered to study for it. If he didn’t pass, bad things would happen. Horrible things.

If he didn’t pass, he would end up back here, or somewhere even worse. Maybe he would end up back in Gus’ lab, chained to a tank. Or maybe he’d be forced to shoot Gale over and over again, or wake up next to Jane. Either way, he needed to pass, but he hadn’t studied. When he turned over the test, it was all in gibberish, all in some language he had never seen before.

He raised his hand to ask Mr. White what all this was about, if he maybe gave him the wrong test, but when he looked at his arm, no hand was attached to it.

Jesse jerked awake in bed and had to bite his lip to keep from screaming. If he screamed, then Todd would come, and nothing good would happen after that. 

Jesse tried to catch his breath. He peeked over at the other bed to find, thankfully, Todd still asleep. He wondered for a moment if he could go over there and kill him and make it look like some kind of accident. If he closed his fingers over the man’s nostrils like so… 

But no. Jesse would not, could not do that again. Ever again. He would need another way out, but it would be a way in which no lives would be lost.

If only he could think of what that way would be – if only he knew.

***

“You have a message from your buddy, Thing 1, up in the other cellblock.” That was how Saul Goodman greeted him about a week later.

“Tell him where he can stick his message. I’m done with Mr. White, yo – I should’ve always been done with his old ass.”

“Okay, when you’re done being a third grader, I’ll tell you – he has a way out.”

“A way out?” Jesse gaped at him. “I’ve been asking for weeks – for weeks! For him to talk to me, or even to acknowledge me, and to care about what’s been happening to me at all, and now you come at me with this shit? Seriously? Does he even actually have a way out or is he looking to try and get me thrown into solitary, cause, you know, like he hasn’t already done enough to completely ruin my life?” Jesse shook his head angrily. “No, man… No, no, no. I’ll find my own way out.”

“You’re not listening to me, kid…”

Jesse bit his lip so hard it bled, and he waved a fist in the air at Saul.

“Don’t you call me that. Don’t you ever call me that!”

Mike’s face filled his memory; his voice, his rare but affectionate touches on Jesse’s shoulder, the way that he had always believed in him, even when he hadn’t believed in himself, even when he had had to smack the results out of him.

Mike was gone. Long gone, and it was all his fault, his and Mr. White’s… and maybe, maybe he did deserve this after all. 

“Okay, okay.” Saul put up his hand, offended. “You don’t need to flip out at me every five seconds. I’m trying to help you, you know. I may be exacting a fee, but there’s a point where it’s not even worth it anymore. There are a lot of questions that I need to be asking myself about where I’m going at this point in my life and what roads I’m…”

“Saul, okay, tell me the stupid fucking plan!” Jesse reached out, ready to grab Saul’s collar and ring the life out of the older man. “Or I’ll kill you right here.”

“Sit down, k… Jesse. Sit down and listen. Boy, have I got a tale for you.”

***

He wondered at it, the way that people worked behind the scenes in situations like this. He felt as if he’d pulled back a curtain and peeked in at a bunch of actors undressing. Maybe it had ruined the magic of… he didn’t know what could be magic in his life now, or maybe ever again. All there had been, for a long time now, had been pain.

He didn’t know which way to turn. Should he listen to Saul, or to Beecher?

Neither was a definite; neither of them had ever looked out for anyone other than themselves, at least as far as Jesse knew.

He was on his own. He’d sent out his distress signal to Mr. White before, and any response had only gotten him further twisted. He needed his out plan, his own way out.

And there was only one that made sense. When he thought about it, it became more and more obvious – it was odd that he hadn’t thought about it before. Maybe he had just been too stubborn to see what was right in front of his face, what Mr. White must have really wanted him to do all this time. 

***

It was odd that no one had expected him to go up on the roof, or maybe no one cared. Maybe that was the plan all along, or maybe Jesse was considered such small fish in the big scheme of things that no one could be bothered to watch what he was doing at any given point in time.

Before he knew it, he was looking down at the city, watching the cars go by. They looked so tiny, beneath him.

He couldn’t falter, he knew, not now. 

No one could save him – not Beecher, not Mr. White, not Saul. At least he wouldn’t have to deal with Todd and Jack again.

He stepped forward.

The wind was biting at his cheeks. 

It was going to be a long way down.


End file.
